Hillbilly history, or “How to know your origins”

Jan 5, 2010

I’m going to pretend a whole bunch of you have asked where the Coding Hillbilly nom de plume comes from instead of just one or two.

Though I love the name, Hillbaley Ho Down and Extravaganza, it actually reinforces a common mis-pronunciation of our last name. It’s buh-LAY, not BAY-lee. One of my resolutions this year is to enforce with military precision (though it may be based on the Bahamian military, rather than, say, Germany) the correct pronunciation. Which is something I’ve become lax with since moving to a country where I have trouble understanding the local populace's tendency to omit key parts of speech. Like verbs.

For several years, my brother and I ran a website, the remnants of which can be seen here. (I’d recommend turning your speakers off before clicking that.) It debuted auspiciously almost ten years ago under the name The Hillbaley Ho Down and Extravaganza. My brother came up with the name as a play on our last name.

The website was an absolute blast to write and did its thing for a few years until it dawned on us that very few of our family, in fact, read. But during that time, I started the technical arm of the Ho Down and used the name of the parent site as the basis for this one. But the name Coding Hillbaley would make sense only to my family who, again, don’t read. So I chose a more mainstream version.

Next question. The avatar I use, seen at the left. This I also stole from my brother. My grandmother has this knick-knack thing she bought from who-knows-where (our money is on a Mexican border town but I shan’t elaborate). My brother took some photos of it, did some touch-ups, and voila!

The original photos of the item are below:

The nice part of the photo is how much it aligns with both the theme of my blog, my general attitude toward software development, and my family in general. Ya, he looks like a hick but damned if he ain’t having a good time. And look like he’s been into the dandelion wine.